


Heart Under His Sleeve

by Liminal_Space_LLC



Series: The World Only Spins Forward universe [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: A lifetime of Jack Zimmermann cluelessness, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety, Break Up, Bullying, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, substance abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 22:19:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16564211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liminal_Space_LLC/pseuds/Liminal_Space_LLC
Summary: It’s said that a person can tell their whole life story just from the soulmarks on their arms, but for the first seventeen years of his life, Jack Zimmermann never had a soulmate.





	Heart Under His Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

> 7 days to go until The World Only Spins Forward is published!
> 
> I'm counting down the last ten days before I post my fic for the OMGCP Big Bang by releasing content from the world of the story every day. They will all be collected in this [tumblr post](https://liminal-space-llc.tumblr.com/post/179805915293/countdown-to-twosf), so if you enjoy this, go check it out :)

It’s said that a person can tell their whole life story just from the soulmarks on their arms, but for the first seventeen years of his life, Jack Zimmermann never had a soulmate.

In middle school, it was just one of the things the other kids made fun of him for. In high school, after people heard that Jack Zimmermann didn’t have any soulmarks, they stayed away from him.

When he went to see doctors and physical therapists, he could see their eyes widen as they realized that he didn’t have even a single name on his body. He could feel them shiver with fear. They sent him for psychological examinations and therapy, but nothing came up except for his anxiety issues.

His parents told him it would happen for him someday. He tried not to think about it. He just always wore sleeves in the locker room and made sure the doctors didn’t tell his coaches. After he got drafted into the Q and left school, he even found himself forgetting about it most of the time.

But he was abruptly reminded, his first time with Kent. He was pressed between Kent and the wall of their hotel room in Halifax after a win, and Kent had already taken his own shirt off when he started tugging at the hem of Jack’s t-shirt. “Come on Zimms,” Kent whined, but Jack went rigid, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. Kent pulled away, and Jack couldn’t look at him.

Kent stopped touching him; even on the ice, during cellies he would only give Jack a smile. It lasted for weeks, until Jack couldn’t stand it anymore and admitted to Kent in the dark of their hotel room that he didn’t have any soulmates. Kent laughed his sweetest laugh and said, “That’s all?” Jack didn’t know what to say to that, so he climbed into Kent’s bed and kissed every inch of him he could reach.

Kent was the first non-doctor to see Jack shirtless in years, and he after that he found that being with Kent was like a new state of mind. In just the same way that hockey made his anxieties disappear, Kent made the rest of the world fade into nothing. And just as hockey had its uniform, talking to Kent had a uniform, or lack thereof. Jack would take off his shirt, Kent would take him in his arms, and Jack was free.

Jack found Kent’s name on his wrist in the locker room after they won the Memorial Cup, then avoided Kent for the entirety of the celebrations. Kent finally tracked him down at the after-party, and Jack didn’t know what to say. Kent talked about how great it was that they were soulmates, and he nodded along, hardly aware of what Kent was saying, until Kent stopped talking. Then Jack hugged him good-bye and dragged his parents out of the party.

Kent texted him after that, but Jack didn’t really know how to respond to those, so he mostly didn’t.

Then the Draft came, and he blew it.

His parents’ names appeared while he was in rehab, his mother first, then his father, pushing Kent’s name up his forearm. Both of his parents cried in family therapy after the marks appeared, and luckily the therapist was there to talk them through the soulmark conversation, so he didn’t fuck it up as much he did with Kent.

But even after his parents’ names appeared, and he had a somewhat reasonable number of soulmarks, he found he couldn’t shake the habit of wearing his shirt all the time. It didn’t matter while he was coaching Pee-Wee, but once he started playing hockey again and occasionally making out with people, he couldn’t shake the habit. He just, didn’t like people seeing his arms.

His teammate Shitty asked him about it once. Jack just shrugged, and Shitty never asked him again. He even started leaving their shared dorm room when Jack went to bed, so he could change in private. It was nice.

Shitty’s name appeared on Jack’s wrist in sophomore year while Shitty was telling off some people for asking Jack if he was a coke addict. After they found their marks, Shitty tackled him into a snow pile and screamed, “BRO!” for ten minutes. It was really nice.

It’s said that a person can tell their life story from only the soulmarks on their arms, but sometimes the marks have to tell the story first.

Jack met Eric Bittle his junior year at Samwell. Bittle was a strong skater with soft hands and great ice sense, though he couldn’t take a check, but Jack worked with him to get through it.

Like a lot of people at Samwell, Bittle was a bit of a mystery to Jack. Instead of doing his homework after class, even the homework he enjoyed, Bittle would bake desserts, which was both unproductive and not consistent with their diet plan. Jack asked Bittle, one day, why he made pies instead of doing his homework. Bittle was quiet for a long time, so long that Jack was sure he’d made a horrible social faux pas, but then Bittle explained that homework made him anxious, so he made pies instead. Jack understood this; he knew the siren song of counterfeit anxiety relief, though his methods had been less harmless than baking. So he asked Bittle to make pies with more protein in them and offered to do homework together in the evenings.

It worked, mostly: Bittle made more meat pies, and he seemed to get a lot of work done during their study sessions, though Jack soon discovered Bittle was a very distracting study partner. Unsurprisingly, Bittle would take breaks to make him read tweets that he didn’t understand and tell him gossip about people he didn’t know, but even when Bittle wasn’t talking, Jack was never as productive as he was when he studied alone. Bittle’s blond hair would move suddenly and catch his eye, or he’d find a funny passage in his book and have to tell it to Bittle. But Jack didn’t mind—he had other study times, and Bittle always seemed more excited to do work when they were together, so it was worth it.

Jack knew Bittle was a great teammate. He was a talented winger, he really helped build the community of the team with his baking and general friendliness, and he even helped out Jack himself. He taught Jack to bake for class, and, after they lost Jack’s senior Frozen Four, Bittle found him hiding in the stands and gave him a hug that somehow made everything a little more okay.

But when Jack found Bittle’s name on his wrist one evening after dinner, he was nonplussed. What made him and Bittle soulmates? Their relationship was not really like his and Shitty’s. And it was nothing like his relationship with either of his parents. And it was so far from his relationship with Kent it was laughable.

Except, when he thought about that hug, the one after the Frozen Four, something deep in his gut remembered how he’d felt when Kent held him. Bittle’s hug had given him that same relief—a sense of being safe and protected from the world.

As soon as he remembered that feeling at the Frozen Four, a thousand moments with Bittle began to connect like dominoes. Telling Bitty about his anxiety, studying with him, organizing the team together—they all had that feeling. That warmth, that comfort. That love.

So when Bitty ran up the stairs and knocked on Jack’s door with his eyes wide and hopeful, Jack already knew his play, and as usual with Bitty, it was nothing but pucks to the net.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you want to read more of my things, I am on [tumblr](https://liminal-space-llc.tumblr.com)!
> 
> The rest of the countdown is [here](https://liminal-space-llc.tumblr.com/post/179805915293/countdown-to-twosf)!


End file.
